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Who is targeting military installations in northern Virginia?

WASHINGTON – The same gun was used to shoot at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Northern Virginia earlier this month, the FBI said Tuesday.

A third military office — a Marine Corps recruiting station in Chantilly, Va., outside Washington — was shot at overnight Monday; Marines who work there discovered the shooting Tuesday morning, the FBI said. Investigators are conducting ballistics tests to determine whether the recruiting station shooting is related to the previous incidents.

No one was injured in any of the shootings.

Investigators haven’t determined a motive or identified a suspect, said Lindsay Godwin, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office.

Though all three shootings have targeted offices with links to the military, Godwin said the FBI has not issued any specific advisories or warnings to recruiting stations or other military buildings.

Early on Oct. 19 shots were fired overnight into two windows at the sprawling Defense Department across the Potomac River in suburban Virginia. Two days earlier, bullet holes were discovered in the windows at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., 30 miles south of the Pentagon.

Federal investigators were at the recruiting station in Chantilly Tuesday, “trying to link anything they can to what has already been proven,” Godwin said.

The FBI declined to identify the type of weapon or ammunition used in the first two shootings in order to avoid compromising its investigation.

Marine Museum officials said that building had been hit by at least 10 rounds. Gwenn Adams, a museum spokeswoman, said last week that officials at the museum, which is associated with the Quantico Marine Base, did not receive any threats or warnings before the shooting.

My $$ would be on this being the act of a so-called “peace activist” group (hey, trust me – they’re anything but “peaceful”) but per multiple articles I’ve read about these incidents, the police are essentially saying it’s too early to be able to determine a possible suspect/motivation.

In any event, let’s hope they can figure out and catch whoever is doing this before someone ends up getting hurt.

Anyone reading this live in the general area where these shootings are happening? If so, what are the local news nets reporting?

My initial guess is this is typical Islamic street theater, a pointless gesture intended to buttress the perpetrator’s self image as a dauntless warrior of Allah.

It’s akin to the footage we see all the time from the ME, of jihadis firing their AK-47s into the air, or dashing into a safe street to loose off a full magazine in front of a convenient camera.

This being America, though, the shooter and his peeps are probably getting together afterwards at a local pizza place to exchange high fives. What surprises me is that cell phone footage of this hasn’t yet appeared on some clown’s Facebook or YouTube account.